To develop a theoretical understanding of organizational control in voluntary organizations, we will study the effect of organizations' control structures on their responses to the social changes in their environment. Specifically, we are studying the ability of one set of national organizations, mainline Protestant church denominations, to exercise control over their local units' (church congregations') stances toward social change. It is evident that church congregations respond differently to such controversial issues as race, poverty, war, abortion, etc. and that some congregations make liberal responses to change despite substantial member dissent. From the point of view of organizational theory, the mainline Protestant church congregation is an especially fruitful unit of analysis it is subject, on the one hand, to the control of its parent denomination (usually relatively liberal) and, on the other, to the control of its members (usually relatively conservative). This research will provide data for studying the conditions under which congregations' official stances on specific social change issues wll be more liberal than the attitudes of their members toward those same issues. The principal hypothesis is that the extent to which congregations' stances will "transcend" (be more liberal than) members' attitudes will vary directly with the strength of the organizations' control structures (e.g., the degree of centralization of authority in the denomination).